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Youths Turn to Web, Magazines
To Unload Fears About Attacks

By

Amy Merrick Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Oct. 18, 2001 11:59 p.m. ET

Doll maker Pleasant Co. is used to preteen girls e-mailing its Web site with questions about boy problems and how to handle mothers who make them go to bed too early. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, the company was flooded with e-mails about fear, terrorism and racial discrimination -- tough topics even by adult standards.

So many girls sent e-mails that Pleasant Co., a Mattel Inc. subsidiary that makes the American Girl dolls and...